Vitamin D Is Essential To The Modern Indoor Lifestyle By Michael Holick October 23rd, 2010; Vol.178 #9 (p. 32) Every cell in the body has a vitamin D receptor protein. It's estimated that upwards of 2,000 genes are directly or indirectly regulated by vitamin D.It’s known that vitamin D is necessary for proper bone formation and maintenance. But recent decades have seen a torrent of studies suggesting that vitamin D can also affect many other aspects of health; some scientists have come to consider the daily recommended intake of 400 international units of vitamin D far too low. Michael Holick...

Supplementation Is Safe and Effective. DR. HEANEY is John A. Creighton University Professor and professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine's Calcium and Related Nutrients Panel of the Food and Nutrition Board, which set the intake recommendations for vitamin D in 1997. He reports no financial disclosures.Widespread supplementation of the adult population with vitamin D is advisable because it restores the conditions under which human physiology evolved, and because it is efficacious and safe.Let's look first at the physiology. Vitamin D is normally made in...

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 25 – Vitamin D may be an effective therapy to treat and even prevent allergy to a common mold that can cause severe complications for patients with cystic fibrosis and asthma, according to researchers from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Louisiana State University School of Medicine. Results of the study, led by Jay Kolls, M.D., Ph.D., a lung disease researcher at Children's Hospital and professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, are published in the September 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Aspergillus...

The extent to which vitamin D deficiency may increase susceptibility to a wide range of diseases is dramatically highlighted in research published today. Scientists have mapped the points at which vitamin D interacts with our DNA – and identified over two hundred genes that it directly influences. The results are published today in the journal Genome Research. It is estimated that one billion people worldwide do not have sufficient vitamin D. This deficiency is thought to be largely due to insufficient exposure to the sun and in some cases to poor diet. As well as being a well-known risk factor...

Vitamin D promises to be the most talked-about and written-about supplement of the decade. While studies continue to refine optimal blood levels and recommended dietary amounts, the fact remains that a huge part of the population — from robust newborns to the frail elderly, and many others in between — are deficient in this essential nutrient. If the findings of existing clinical trials hold up in future research, the potential consequences of this deficiency are likely to go far beyond inadequate bone development and excessive bone loss that can result in falls and fractures. Every tissue in the body, including...

Vitamin D expert Anthony Norman recommends a daily intake of 2000 international units for most adultsRIVERSIDE, Calif. – Vitamin D surfaces as a news topic every few months. How much daily vitamin D should a person get? Is it possible to have too much of it? Is exposure to the sun, which is the body's natural way of producing vitamin D, the best option? Or do supplements suffice? In the July 2010 issue of Endocrine Today, a monthly newspaper published by SLACK, Inc., to disseminate information about diabetes and endocrine disorders, Anthony Norman, a distinguished professor emeritus of biochemistry and...

Physicians say Canadians should be taking more supplementsNew and updated guidelines on recommended vitamin D intake have been published this week in the online issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). Dr. David Hanley, professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine, and member of Osteoporosis Canada's (OC) Scientific Advisory Council, is the lead author of the paper on behalf of Osteoporosis Canada. "OC's current recommendations on vitamin D intake for Canadians are more than 10 years old, and since then, there has been a lot of new and exciting research in this area," says Hanley, who is...

Previously I have highlighted the benefits vitamin D has with regard to improving the immune response and helping keep infections such as flu at bay. It has been mooted that the upsurge in viral infections during the winter is connected with the generally lower vitamin D levels at this time. The traditional view is that winter infections are due to Â“indoor crowding.Â”However, research indicates that flu epidemics do not occur in the summer in crowded workplaces despite the presence of the flu virus around people who should be susceptible to infection. This is based on research by the Centers for...

The amount of cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream is partly regulated by the brain, a study in mice suggests. It counters assumptions that levels are solely controlled by what we eat and by cholesterol production in the liver. The US study in Nature Neuroscience found that a hunger hormone in the brain acts as the "remote control" for cholesterol travelling round the body.Too much cholesterol causes hardened fatty arteries, raising the risk of a heart attack. The research carried out by a US team at the University of Cincinnati found that increased levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin in mice...

A pair of new studies has uncovered evidence that low levels of vitamin D could lead to poor blood sugar control among diabetics and increase the risk of developing metabolic syndrome among seniors. ..... More than 90 percent of the patients, who ranged in age from 36 to 89, had either vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency, the authors found, despite the fact that they all had had routine primary care visits before their specialty visit. Just about 6 percent of the patients were taking a vitamin D supplement at the time of their visit, the research team noted, and those...

At a time when consumer interest in health-enhancing foods is high, Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-funded scientists have contributed to a limited but growing body of evidence of a link between vitamin D and cognitive function. Cognitive function is measured by the level at which the brain is able to manage and use available information for activities of daily life. Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of age-related dementia, affects about 47 percent of adults aged 85 years or older in the United States. Identifying nutritional factors that lower cognitive dysfunction and help preserve independent living provides economic and public health...

People who remain pale and never tan can blame their distant ancestors for choosing to live in the northern reaches of the globe and those who easily achieve a deep tan can thank their ancestors for living in the subtropical latitudes, according to Penn State anthropologists. "The variation of ultraviolet radiation, especially in the middle and high latitudes is great," said Nina Jablonski, professor of anthropology and chair of Penn State's anthropology department. "Tanning has evolved multiple times around the world as a mechanism to partly protect humans from harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation." Jablonski, working with George Chaplin, senior...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Low vitamin D levels may be associated with more advanced physical disability and cognitive impairment in persons with multiple sclerosis, studies conducted by neurologists at the University at Buffalo have shown. Their results, reported at the American Academy of Neurology meeting, held earlier this month, indicated that: * The majority of MS patients and healthy controls had insufficient vitamin D levels. * Clinical evaluation and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images show low blood levels of total vitamin D and certain active vitamin D byproducts are associated with increased disability, brain atrophy and brain lesion load in MS...

According to legend, it was The Fountain of Youth that the famed Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon was seeking when he landed on the Floridian coast in 1513. It has long been said that he who drinks from the Fountain will have his youth restored. Without a doubt, the quest for eternal youth is as ancient as any pursuit. However, although we are now living longer than ever, there is now growing concern that quantity of years is not nearly as important as quality of those years. Indeed, as we experience the many joys of living longer, we also must...

I need some help and I thought freepers could help. My daughter has low vitamin d due to anti-seizure medication she is taking. We are giving her 4000 IU of D3 every, but her levels have only gone from 19-24 (under 30 is deficient), and we've been supplementing for over a year. Our pediatrician is not sure what to do. My daughter is also symptomatic of low Vitamin D. This past year she has gotten lots of colds, her allergies are worse, and her problems with asthma are significantly worse. I know there have been lots of posts about problems...

(NaturalNews) I remember the H1N1 "swine flu" season of 2009 very well. People were rushing out to get vaccinated, scared half to death by the mainstream media which was pushing false reports that the swine flu would kill tens of millions of people and that only a vaccine could save you. The CDC and health authorities were pushing a double-barreled vaccine strategy that demanded people get both a seasonal flu shot as well as an H1N1 pandemic flu shot. Those who questioned the sensibility of vaccines for fighting the flu were attacked as "baby killers" for not kow-towing to the...

Women living in the northeastern United States are more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis (RA), suggesting a link between the autoimmune disease and vitamin D deficiency, says a new study led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher. In the paper, which appears online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, a spatial analysis led by Dr. Verónica Vieira, MS, DSc, associate professor of environmental health, found that women in states like Vermont, New Hampshire and southern Maine were more likely to report being diagnosed with RA. "There's higher risk in the northern latitudes," Dr. Vieira said. "This might...

MADISON — For more than 30 years, scientists have known that multiple sclerosis (MS) is much more common in higher latitudes than in the tropics. Because sunlight is more abundant near the equator, many researchers have wondered if the high levels of vitamin D engendered by sunlight could explain this unusual pattern of prevalence. Vitamin D may reduce the symptoms of MS, says Hector DeLuca, Steenbock Research Professor of Biochemistry at University of Wisconsin-Madison, but in a study published in PNAS this week, he and first author Bryan Becklund suggest that the ultraviolet portion of sunlight may play a bigger...

Regarding tuberculosis, there’s good news and bad news. Let’s start with the good news: the CDC announced that the rate of tuberculosis in the United States dropped 11.8% in 2008. The bad news comes from estimates prepared by the World Health Organization, which asserted this week that drug resistant tuberculosis is on the rise in other parts of the globe, most notably in Russia, India and China. In fact, of the 440,000 cases of resistant TB reported in 2008, one third died and half were in India and China. As a result, WHO is urging these countries to devote entire...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Vitamin D is quickly becoming the "go-to" remedy for treating a wide range of illnesses, from osteoporosis to atherosclerosis. However, new evidence from a Wake Forest University School of Medicine study suggests that supplementing vitamin D in those with low levels may have different effects based on patient race and, in black individuals, the supplement could actually do harm. The study is the first to show a positive relationship between calcified plaque in large arteries, a measure of atherosclerosis or "hardening of the arteries," and circulating vitamin D levels in black patients. It appears in the March...